(This story is drawn from different chapters of my first novel, Renaissance Radio. Riis Evans, the lead character and narrator, tells the tale of he and his wife Carmen visiting Chicago in Spring 1929.)
As Carmen and I exit the train at Union Station, we’re spotted by a boy of about 14 whose hat is askew and whose bravado is obvious. Even though we’ve visited Chicago several times, he sees that we’re both exhilarated and overwhelmed as he shouts out to us “rock it to ‘em!”
Our friend since our college days, Troy Edwards, comes gliding toward us. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “now presenting the one and only Troy Edwards! Isn’t he magnificent? You may applaud, my friends and fellow citizens, you may applaud!”
Carmen and I grin and clap. We’re always entertained by Troy’s grand entrances. I can’t say I’ve ever seen Troy without him displaying a heavy dose of confidence.
“Troyo,” I ask, “how’s it going with your jazz station?” I ask.
“Well, Reeso,” he replies, “I still have before me the brightest future of any Colored man in America.”
“Of course you do, Prince.” What else can you nickname a guy who dresses in style, has such a self-assured air and bearing, and thinks so highly of himself?
Troy beams. “I didn’t know exactly how it’d all come together – ragtime and jazz, wireless, and the world of business – but I knew it was going to all come together and I’d be at the center of it.”
“I always said you’d be a success,” I tell him.
He looks at us and exclaims, “let’s go see Louis Armstrong in person at the Savoy!”
“Sure!” says Carmen.
“You’re on!” I say.
Troy pulls out four tickets. “But first let’s head out to the cabarets.”
“Let’s go!” Carmen and I chant together.
Troy’s wife Mary is waiting for us in their motor car – a Packard – and after Carmen and I toss our luggage in their trunk, the four of us head for the South Side of Chicago.
We love spending time at the cabarets. Carmen and I always find plenty of dance partners, and together we cross a threshold out of our everyday routine and into an intensely pulsating realm. When a whole cabaret joint is moving fast and swift, when we’re all rocking to a rhythm, we become animated. We get keyed up. From sundown to sunup, we experience something powerful, something beyond words, something visceral.
There are quite a few South Side cabarets – called Black-and-Tans – where young people of both races hang out together. Young Whites genuinely admire the Black and Creole jazz musicians. Black American jazz musicians have developed an art form that the whole world respects.
Even at the black-and-tans, almost all the customers still sit at tables in segregated areas. It’s a strange ritual, but we all watch a floor show (a revue) with Black vocalists and dancers. Then, while the cautious, uncomfortable White customers stay in their seats – maybe they’ve never had a close Black friend? – the rest of us, of both races, dance the moves that the Black revue dancers just performed for us.
We get up there on the dance floor, Black and White, and we mix, we mingle, we interact. We’re exploring. We get over our discomfort around each other, we talk, we flirt, we take in the music, and we dance. Our dancing is inclusive. Confusion lifts. Fears are allayed. The sense of danger subsides. We become reassured in each other’s presence.
And as we intermingle on the dance floor, we share the harmony, the rhythm, and our sensual and spiritual energy. Dancing together, we become more aware of each other as individuals and we reach a rare state of accord with each other as fellow members of the human race.
“Who says the color line can’t melt away?” I ask Troy.
“The only place in America where it does,” Troy reminds me.
It’s 1928 and the Ku Klux Klan rules from Dixie to Denver – even New York City cabarets remain sharply segregated – but in these black-and-tan cabarets in southside Chicago, the racial barriers do dissolve. Wherever we’ve grown up, wherever we’ve come from, whatever our race, we enter for a few hours into a blessed state of unity.
And now onto see Louis Armstrong. This past Thanksgiving night the Savoy Ballroom opened. Inside the Savoy complex, the Regal Theater opened in February. The Savoy is where Armstrong performs, always to a packed house.
Tonight Louis walks out and introduces himself as “the Reverend Satchelmouth Armstrong”. The man always looks sharp. He has a stylish suit and a tie with an extra-big knot.
He turns his back to the audience, hangs his head as if he’s hiding from us, and then begins his transfiguration. He spins around, raises his arms slightly, extends his palms out, and raises up, higher and higher into the light, both his head and his trumpet. He’s filling the audience with the same spirit that’s filling him, and as he keeps sending that glowing energy to us, we keep responding.
As soon as he starts playing his trumpet and singing, we, the crowd, start in with our cheers, whistles, catcalls, and applause.
The first song is “Gut Bucket Blues”. We hear Louis Armstrong blow a flowing and delicate solo. Then we hear his horn do a shimmering dance.
“He’s skipping along the melody,” Troy observes as Louis and the band readjust for their next song. “He doesn’t blow every note. First it’s every other note, then every third note. It’s indirect. We listen to him and we hear only what he’s suggesting. He makes the melody disappear behind notes that merely suggest the melody. We fill the gaps in ourselves, with some part of our awareness beyond our conscious mind. Who else does that?”
“Pure genius,” I agree. Louis makes a telling statement with every solo. His solos are eloquent, balanced, passionate, dramatic, sweeping, and grand. Most of all they’re beautiful.
Four more masterpieces follow: “Big Butter and Egg Man”. “You Made Me Love You”. “Heebie-Jeebies”. And “Hotter Than That”.
When his virtuosity hits a peak, the applause is deafening.
Everyone finds endearing his relentless, broad, and beaming smile. He grins from ear to ear. He is confident, exuberant, and boisterous. His eye contact with his audience is direct and it’s constant except when his pupils roll upward; then it feels like he’s no longer in the room.
His exaggerated humility, especially his clownish mugging and reflexive bowing, doesn’t bother those of who are White. We see it as him ingratiating himself with us, his audience. But our Black friends are clearly uncomfortable with it.
We all laud Armstrong for singing and playing the trumpet and cornet as if he can never do enough to please his audience. He works so hard on stage that he has to regularly dab away the perspiration from his brow with that towel-like Turkish handkerchief of his.
Armstrong adds side comments and jokes as he goes. His patter is extravagant and fascinating. He shouts out to his fellow musicians: “Aw, play that thing, you know you can do it. Hey, hey!” “Aw, pick that piano, gal.” “Aw, you can really blow that clarinet, Dad.” “Aw, whip that thing, whip it!” “Everybody can do it. Swing it!”
As the band takes a break, Louis Armstrong emerges from the back of the club. He’s moving in our general direction, greeting people along the way. “Good to see you here, Slippers” to one guy, “thanks for coming out tonight, Bo’ Hog” to another.
Louis and Troy have conversed dozens of times over the past few years. They almost qualify as friends. So it’s not too surprising that when Louis sees Troy he makes a beeline for our table. Louis greets Troy by putting a hand on Troy’s shoulder and exclaiming that he’s “thrilled to the gills to see ya, Jive Talker! Whatcha say, Troy?”
“What’s new, Dipper?”
“Nothing’ new,” Louis replies. “White folks still ahead.”
“The races are mixing more and more in Chicago, Gate,” Troy enthuses to Louis. “We’re doing our part.” Last year Armstrong broke a major racial barrier, leading a Black band in a downtown hotel ballroom.
“Those people who make the restrictions, they don’t know nothin’ about music,” Louis replies. “It’s no crime for cats of any color to get together and blow.”
Louis looks at Mary. “Sweet Creole Child,” he says. Mary smiles and Armstrong turns back to Troy. “We’re sure makin’ this place jump tonight, eh, Jive?”
Troy replies, “you sure are, Dip.”
Louis has met Mary several times and knows that Mary’s parents were from Louis’s hometown of New Orleans. “So much Jazz comes from the old levee camp music and from the old Sanctified Churches,” Louis tells Mary. “We should talk about that sometime.” She nods.
Troy points at you and me and says, “Satchelmouth, you remember my friends Riis and Carmen —”
“—Cowboy and Senorita,” says Armstrong. “Sure I do. Are you enjoying the performance?”
“Definitely,” I say.
“Immensely,” Carmen tells him.
“I spied the four of you as soon as I stepped off the stage. Look at you in your fine threads. Dressed up to the nines. Everybody in good humor?” All four of us nod and smile.
Louis looks at Troy. “Boy are we riffin’ tonight. We can really punch a number, eh? Playin’ that jump music, makin’ these people swing like mad. You are rockin’ this place, Dip.”
Louis smiles back at us again. “Things are jumpin’ ‘round America. More work than a cat can shake a stick at. I’m goin’ places in the music world, gettin’ to the top.”
“You are already at the top, I’d say, Louis,” Troy tells him.
“Troy,” says Louis, “you really do appreciate my every efforts. And you have such a good-looking personality.” He looks at Mary. “You’re a wonder, sister, and always a warm word for everyone you meet. You have my blessings, Troy and Mary. Am so happy to have your encouragement and praise. I’ll never forget you, as long as I’m Colored.” We all laugh.
Louis looks over at Carmen and decides to tell her something special. “My mother had common sense and respect for human beings. Yeah, that’s my diploma. Mother did not have an awful lot of learnings. But she taught me the real rudiments of life. And Mother had the greatest confidence in me. I feel right to this day that I have gotten the very best of the deal. In life, that is.”
As that’s soaking in on us, Louis glances toward the stage. “Well, I better get back to the cats in the band.” He looks at us as he stands up. “Seems a drag to leave you.”
It’s a challenge to describe an encounter with him. On the one hand, he’s easygoing, genuine, unassuming, and unpretentious. And yet you feel him opening his big, kind, warm, compassionate heart to you and opening his expansive, capacious awareness to you – opening his whole being to you – and it feels like he somehow understands you like no one else ever has. He somehow understands you from your own point of view.
With a parting smile, Louis looks at Carmen and tells the four of us one last thing. “Just before she died, Mother looked at me and said words which touched me deeply: ‘Son, you have a kind heart. Treats everybody right, carry on, and you can’t miss.’”
And then he’s gone. Soon he’s back up on stage, starting his next number. Armstrong executes song after song with his gifts, his mastery, his brilliance. Each song is so magnificent and so right. His technical dexterity is astounding. His tone is electrifying. His technique is perfect. His sense of harmony is superb. And he makes every song swing.
He embroiders rhythms within the rhythm as he alternates and blends power and grace. He sings first in a light tenor, then in a low growl. He turns tunes inside out.
Next is “When You’re Smiling”. People all over America are being floored by it. Louis’s playing of “When You’re Smiling” sends his entire audience, from one end of the hall to the other, into an uproar.
Then he plays “Weather Bird”. It’s a duet with Earl Hines, who may be as much of a musical genius as Armstrong. It’s the most extraordinary duet I’ve ever heard. It’s so free-swinging and improvising and yet it’s so cohesive and beautiful. The mutual jamming that starts more than a minute and a half into the song is the most sparkling instrumental exchange ever to reach my ears. Half a minute later Hines starts making sounds leap. Then they both return to the harmony and bring it in for a landing. Their performance leaves us in a state of wonder.
Louis often closes his eyes while singing and playing. He shares his music and all the joy it brings him. He lavishes the music and the joy on us, his audience, holding nothing back from us, and we respond in kind. He takes us into that stratosphere with him. His music is a heightened form of existence.
It’s like he’s drawing all of us into the light. What’s he telling us? Are you hurting? Embrace life, even through the most difficult circumstances. The sun is gonna come shining through again. It’s gonna be all right.
This larger-than-life, buoyant soul ignites everything around him. He animates us. He plays, talks, and sings so genuinely, so naturally, it’s easy to forget we are interacting with greatness.
For his second-to-last song of the night Louis plays a solo called “Potato Head Blues”. The song is a masterpiece, remarkably organized, with perfect phrasing, tempo, and balance. The emotional pitch and the tension build up, are suddenly released, and build again. The melody breaks out and soars. It’s a playful and even humorous song and some of the high notes burst out in joy, and yet the song is poignant. The syncopation is subtle while there are fleeting and nimble patterns and breaks. “Potato Head Blues” is full of surprising twists and turns through its constantly moving melody. Some of the lines are majestic and the song fits elegantly, flows through its contours and rhythms, and shines out as a whole.
“Show us those purty notes,” Troy shouts out to Louis. It is indeed a dialogue of notes – a brilliant, dazzling, and stunning achievement.
And to cap off his performance and the night, Louis and his band play “West End Blues”. Carmen and I switch dance partners, and all four of us are quivering as we start dancing to it.
Louis Armstrong is on the move from the first note of “West End Blues”. With his big-toned trumpet cadenza, we hear him flourish across spiraling notes and cascading phrases to a fierce high note that’s embellished by his touch of vibrato. The panache and virtuosity of his opening fanfare is so bold, so difficult and dazzling, so spectacular. It throbs with life itself and proclaims ultimate victory. You and I are left in a state of thrilled astonishment.
We keep dancing as Armstrong shifts gears. He slows down, raising the rhythmic stakes. The band enters the tune. Louis plays the tricky flurry of the theme. Earl Hines offers his own original construction on the piano. Delicately and tenderly, Louis’s voice exchanges phrases in a heart-warming bluesy call-and-response with the clarinet. Then he croons a wistful and lovely obbligato, straight into our hearts: Wah-dwa-dwa, wah-dwa-dwa-doh, waaah-dwa-dwo-loh, wa-da-dee-dee-da.
Louis moves into a second horn solo. He vaults upward again, varying the arpeggios of the opening cadenza. An impassioned rhythmic phrase repeats itself and floats freely above the accompaniment. He holds one note like a gleaming arrow for four shimmering bars, until it pierces the very fabric of the song. After one last fulsome cadence, Louis lets go, descends from the heavens, and frees up the song to satisfy us with its concluding clash of cymbals.
As we let Louis Armstrong give our souls one more summons to transcendence, all four of us become lost in reverie and we close our eyes. Within moments we find ourselves letting our whole beings soar into as sublime a space as any of us can imagine.
“He somehow understands you from your own point of view.”
A very powerful sentence in a great story.
Makes Louie Armstrong come alive